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Tears Before the Rain TEARS BEFORE THE RAIN An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam LARRY ENGELMANN Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1990 by Larry Engelmann Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Engelmann, Larry. Tears before the rain : an oral history of the fall of South Vietnam Larry Engelmann. p. cm. ISBN 0-19-5053869 1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975—Personal narratives. I. Title. DS559.5.E45 1990 959.704′38-dc20 89-26629 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For My Mother Delores Barnett I don’t want my memories to be lost, like tears in the rain. So I will tell you my story. Then you can tell it to others. Maybe if enough people know what happened to Vietnam, then my memories will never be lost. Maybe then they will be like tears before the rain. So listen. This is very important. This is what I remember. This is what happened to me. These are my tears before the rain. Duong Gang Son Preface During the last days of January in 1975 an unusually large swarm of bees descended on Saigon, the embattled capital of South Vietnam. The bees settled on two small apartment buildings. The terrified inhabitants of the buildings ran away. A few dauntless residents, however, soon returned to assail the swarm. They decided to use smoke to dislodge the bees. But before the smoke was used, other people who had heard about the bees suggested that they had been sent to Saigon to convey a warning. The many seers and mystics of the city who were adept at deciphering fantastic and arcane phenomena announced that the arrival of the bees indicated that in a short time the Vietnamese people themselves would be like the bees. “And as we treat them,” the mystics and seers said, “so will we in turn be treated.” The conviction that the bees were a sign gained popular acceptance quickly. No smoke was used to dislodge them. From around the city people came to gaze at them and to wonder. No one entered the buildings. And then, only a day after they had first appeared in Saigon, the bees departed. They fled to the southeast in the direction of Vung Tau and the South China Sea. And although no one could say for sure what was meant specifically by the revelation that the people of Vietnam would be like the bees, many people wondered and worried more than ever about the future. Only a few days after the bees abandoned Saigon, another unusual swarm appeared; this time near Phan Rang, northeast of Saigon. A vast army of caterpillars materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, and migrated to the southwest, blanketing the roads and fields. At first cars and cyclists simply drove over them and people walked on them. They were nothing more than a nuisance. But once again the mystics cautioned that the caterpillars should be regarded as a divine omen and should not be harmed. “Soon we shall surely be like the caterpillars,” they warned, “and as we treat them, so in turn will we be treated.” Then, like the bees, the caterpillars disappeared. By the time the bees and caterpillars had appeared, South Vietnam was engaged in the second year of what President Nguyen Van Thieu termed “the Third Indochina War.” In that war the armed forces of South Vietnam continued to fight against the insurgent Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies. But missing from the conflict was the United States. More than a decade earlier President John F. Kennedy had talked about making power credible and defending freedom and had concluded that “Vietnam is the place” to do both. In 1973, however, the American people and their leaders had decided that Vietnam was not the place. No more Americans should die for Vietnam, they decreed. And so, early in 1973, after more than four years of negotiation in Paris, the United States finally came to terms with North Vietnam and signed what was called “An Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam.” South Vietnam signed the agreement only reluctantly and after prolonged pressure and threats of an aid cutoff from the United States. The agreement provided for the disengagement and withdrawal of American combat forces from South Vietnam and an exchange of all prisoners of war. It also provided joint commissions for monitoring the release of prisoners and the withdrawal of American and

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CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott